because this is the attorney for the president of the united states. >> laura: let's go to ken starr. ken, a general question, imagine if hillary clinton's attorney's office had been raided, had to turn over their phones, computers, big deal, what do you think the media's reaction might have been to that? >> very negative three of the attorney-client privilege is sacrosanct. yes, there are exceptions. my word, we are a country where we look at the rule of law and that means process counts, procedure counts, and i couldn't agree more with what saul just said, that the special master, the third party review is exactly the kind of thing that one would expect the government reasonably to say, we are dealing with the president of the united states, even if we weren't, is a good procedure. we are certainly using the right procedures. i think it is unfortunate and unwise that the government is playing super hard ball here. your reaction to the comey interview, specifically, his speculation regarding there was something that russia had on the president, wetherbee's allegations in the dossier

that takes you back to the ken starr era. ken starr did not indict bill clinton.ith a report that led to impeachment. all of this, you know, continues to this pattern of getting closer and closer and now the big question is, you've been talking about this all day, will the president be so arrogant he'll sit down with bob mueller? will he ignore his smarter lawyers and go into that situation because what can possibly go wrong? >> let me ask you to try to answer that, eugene. >> you know, it's unclear to me he will have a choice. he is the president so he can say no. if he won't agree to sit down with bob mueller and mueller really wants him, he can get a grand jury subpoena and seek to compel the president to appear. and then there could be a court battle over that, whether the president has to speak. you know, i hope it doesn't go all the way there. but mueller has a lot of cards in this fight and so it's not clear to me that the president absolutely could avoid sitting down with mueller if he really wand to. >> there's a whole lot of cards. a quick break for us.

former independent counsel and former solicitor general ken starr dreads me now. welcome, great to have you with us tonight. >> thank you, good to be with you. >> martha: you heard the set up piece and you heard all of this with regard to mccabe and what the president has been told about the michael cohen investigation, what jumped out at you about all of this? >> one key element is that the president has been told again that he is not a target and this is from the deputy attorney general for the united states. that is pure gold and that could change because the facts and all of that. the second thing is the inspector general who is a career official at the justice department has made this criminal referral, that's a very important step, it's a dangerous step obviously for mr. mccabe, but it shows that these guardrails are working, that these accountability mechanisms as director comey said are in fact in place. i think that should be a great assurance to the american people. the third thing that jumps out at me is that the president has hired a brilliant lawyer.

preclude mueller from indicting literally everybody else, but trump will be dealt with just like ken starr dealt with president clinton. the report puts the impeachment process in motion. joining us to discuss his remarkable reporting, one of the reporters with a by line in that report, robert costa, msnbc contributor joyce vance, a former u.s. attorney, frank figliuzzi, former fbi director for counter intelligence now an msnbc national analyst, and mimi, assistant u.s. attorney. first congrats on the megascoop. take us through what you and your colleague carol are reporting achlt alwa reporting. >> always good to be with you, nicolle. we reported the president's legal team have been informed by special counsel robert mueller that he is a subject of the ongoing federal probe, not a witness in terms of his classification, neither is he at this moment a target, but the investigation continues. talking to our sources familiar with these discussions, they say that as you reported, that there is a report that's in the works, a document of sorts that could come out by this summer that would deta

we will either see it in the form of more indictments or we will see it in the form of the ken starrort. back in the '90s, ken starr wrapped up his investigation, he turned over many hundreds of pages to congress which became public. i don't know if we will get something that fulsome but i don't think there's anyway bob mueller is going to keep to himself what he finds. >> shannon: they talked about this on the legal news blog. they said the question of whether and how the public will know what mueller knows is complicated legally, historically, and complicated with respect to another variable. how mueller imagines his role as special counsel. they lay out several scenarios. >> i think, needless to say, there is going to be intense public interest. reporting either to the acting attorney general or congress, it's going to become public. something like this cannot be kept under wraps. it's going to see the light of day. i think it will see the light of day at a time and place that bob mueller's choosing. >> shannon: what do you make of the dutch attorney that's going to be sentenced t

let's discuss their impact with judge ken starr.pendent counsel investigation into president bill clinton. always good to see you, sir. >> hey, thank you, chris. good to see you. >> significance of the memos? >> oh, it's a real treasure trove, my word. we have real insights, i think, into the president's thinking. a lot of this we knew, but one of the things that i took away, chris, is the president, who was a new president at the time, hates leaks. and he asked jim comey does the fbi leak? and jim comey said of course. a president is not going to like that. that's not going to sit well with any president, it doesn't matter what party, what the person's background is at all. general flynn's judgment, that was a very revealing -- >> what the president said about his concerns about his judgment you mean? >> yes, exactly. >> the reason i contextualize it, the president went like this to jim comey and said there's something wrong with his head because something that happened in front of theresa may. the reason i ask this morning the pre

ken starr started in '94 and went on beyond bill clinton being in office. i don't know why, what is everyone afraid of to just let this man do his job? >> there is another issue. james comey's judgment, it gets to the core of whether he did a good job as head of the fbi. take the investigation of hillary. whether you agree with what he found her didn't, james comey had no role or responsibility to usurp the duties of the attorney general and the department of justice and decide no reasonable prosecutor would settle this case. the proper thing to do would have been to silently make his defiance known known to the det of justice. comey couldn't do that because he couldn't resist the camera. he had to go out and hold a news conference where he concluded basically that hillary broke the law and then he said but no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute her. >> laura: he allowed peter strzok and a couple others to edit the remarks. to make them not comport. how do you do that? can i read an excerpt? >> we are where we are. >> that's true. >> so what. just don't b

" ed: here, with insight the former solicitor general to the united states ken starr who of course investigated dershowitz and he said it was troubling the way all this played out and he said it would be a stretch to say this is the legal principle of the poisonous tree and that everything gained from the special counsel now is illegal. what say you? >> yes, well i understand the president's frustration. all this information is flowing in, the information is very troubling, the comey memos are very troubling, but i agree with alan. i don't think this will prevail in court. by the way one great thing that happened this week, as i see it is the president widely selected rudy guiliani. i served in the justice department during the reagan administration with rudy. obviously he was a great mayor, great united states attorney but here is the point. he's a great lawyer and he will be, if rudy goes in court and says it's illegal then it's going to be taken very seriously but i think it's a hard argument ed: real quick before we move on the subject have you had any conservations with the president or an

here's the thing, the democrats didn't like it when ken starr was rummaging around in bill clinton's personal life. and why is the justice department doing that right now? but when you put all of this together you can start to see why donald trump is just apoplectic over the raid. because this means the justice department is squarely focused on the inner workings of the trump campaign and his closest surrounding him during the campaign. >> apoplectic in terms of using capital letters saying witch-hunt and now floating the idea of not just getting rid of robert mueller, and also getting rid of rosenstein who is really in charge of mueller. where do you think this goes? >> it is like the juncture at which president nixon found himself getting a negative reflection up on the hill. with the polls out today saying the overwhelming majority of the american people don't think bob mueller should be fired that if the president were to understand rosenstein and people were to understand that was a thinly veiled evident to terminate the mueller investigation that the public would then shift its

. >> everybody worked for ken starr if he is a republican, this is not unusual. the only thing i would tell the president, mr. mueller, had a good reputation, doing his job as far as i can tell. normally you can dismiss - if he didn't coordinate, collude with the russians, nothing to worry about the only way to get in t trouble is take the law i your hands, richard nixon tried that and it didn't work out well. heather: the president publicly called out vladimir putin, you're calling mike lee, if you put together a response, military force, for authorization before military force. >> wrong about everything related to this, i likeke him lot. war, the declares president can't do that. the president, cmdr. in chief, to go after enemies of this nation, how many does the guy have to kill by chlorine gas until the world gets upset. the president can't rely on the united nations when it comes to rogue regimes. nothing will happen. the only thing that can happen is for donald trump to lead a coalition of the willing, e to destroy every airbase, and no planes available, an

thanks to ken starr, i don't think we hold our politicians to the same moral standards we did during the eisenhower era. >> the evangelicals say they care about moral issues, but it's not apparent they care when it comes to donald trump. i don't want to beat up somebody who says they were intimidated, given we know michael cohen, the president's personal lawyer. someone who silences people and has been known to intimidate people. kennedy: going to strip clubs taking off her clothes. comey has taken off the tie. what's next? who is the bigger media tour, stormy or comey? >> comey is selling a book. they both think they are right and they are trying to stop this man president trump from countering our norms. not being the kind of president they are accustomed to. >> i remember the clinton administration having similar allegations. kennedy: hillary clinton and christopher hitchens was no fan of the former secretary of state. i want to thank you all for your awesomeness because it's blinding. i'm taking them all home it's taco night. the freedom caucus has a list of demands. i'll ask jim

. >> we used to have an independent counsel law, what led to the ken starr and that investigation, but there is no law on the books right now. congress is talking about something like that to protects bob mueller's investigation. if you don't have that, all you have is the informal pressure of members of congress, saying look, if you remove mueller, and it turns out you've done something wrong, we'll move forward with impeachment. i don't see anything wrong with trying to remove mueller, but i do see a problem with removing rosenstein. >>> we'll get to people who were impacted by the years long civil war in syria. we'll have a report on the women and children who survived that deadly chemical attack. this cnn exclusive straight ahead. ook really good without the stripes. margo and sam had a vision, brought to life in one coat. whatever your home may hand you, behr through it, in one coat. behr marquee, #1 rated interior paint. guaranteed in 1,000 plus colors. find it exclusively at the home depot. (vo)is ahhhmazing!ful simple goodness meaty morsels. a tender texture. with real meat and

when i worked for ken starr and i would come home every night at about 1 a.m.'m telling you literally 75% of the stuff i saw about what we were supposedly doing had absolutely no basis in reality. no davis nobody had any idea -- nobody knew who papadopoulos was before that criminal information came out. so stay tuned. >> we are. dana, over to you, though. i think it is important to point out the relationship between president trump and michael cohen. i think it was last september that he gave an interview at "vanity fair" where he said i'm the guy who would take a bullet for the president. we've had this whole discussion about even though it sdny, it would be more and it could be something used at leverage, but bu that said, michael cohen, of all people to flip do you think based upon what you know, could he? >> it would be very, very difficult, but he's human. and he has a family. he has a family, a wife and children that he wants to protect. so depending on how far down the road this goes, doo pending on how much pressure is on michael cohen to flip or it giv

attorney's office in the southern district of new york has a former special prosecutor ken starr saying the mueller investigation has gone way out of bounds. >> the cohen thing is very troubling to me. any time a lawyer's office is raided i believe all americans should be concerned about that. what is the justification? there was a safeguard in place and judicial review but i'm very concerned about the process that will be followed to protect the attorney/client privilege, which is sank row sank in america law and it should be. one of the most important elements to protect the liberties of the people. i'm very concerned. >> legal sources close to the white house also tell fox news that rosenstein's statement about the president not being a target of the cohen investigation could be problematic if the u.s. attorney's office does develop information that could lead the president to be a target. as one source told me there were a lot of prominent people in that room, including the president. for there to be an abrupt change in the investigation could be problematic and some people who beli

if he could get trump, it would be a great kneltfeather in his just like ken starr wanted to get presidentut it's the role of the civil libertarian is to make sure that they don't use means to the e s ends. first they go after s.o.b.s and they establish press didn'ts there and then they come against the rest of us. i'm not partisan, i only care about civil liberties and due process. >> do you think it's a problem that the president seems to watch so much television, react to what he sees on television, including your segments? is ill it a healthy thing? >> that's how the president got elected, he tweeted, he watched television. hillary clinton, barack obama, who work hard, he works hard. that's why i'm a democrat. i didn't vote for donald trump. >> a lot of liberals reading his column as a fantasy. this is a week we know with increasing certainty that we are. >>ing the last phase of the trump presidency. this doesn't feel like a prophecy, it feels like a simple statement of apparent truth. do you believe that's the case that the cohen raid is going to be very damaging? >> i have always tho

i think it is really important to point out that unlike ken starr who made his whole investigation about sex, bob mueller has pointed that off to a triple pointy. spoon it's a distinction of difference, but i want to press you on whether you're specifically comfortable with the fbi going in with a warrant into the president's lawyer's office in search of materials related to his sex life. are you come to what that? speak out what i've said several times as i don't care about that. >> tucker: are you comfortable with the fbi just dead >> if he finds evidence of other crimes unrelated to the investigation, he can't ignore them. the proper thing to do is to hand them off to someone else. in this case, a triple pointy, but it is not fair to say that a distinction without a difference. that's staying focused. >> tucker: right. i'm not asking the same question for the fifth time because you're not going to answer it. this is not what we were looking for when we appointed a special counsel. this looks very much like what democrats complained about. >> if you can't understand that bob mueller fa

worked very well for bill clinton during the monica lewinsky investigation, with special prosecutor ken starrd i think it would work so much better for trump in this case, if they saw him doing things that presidents do, whether it's from a national security perspective, what we have been seeing him do for the last 48 hours or so, they would better be able to think about the claims that comey's making and the way that the president is acting. but as the president is won't to do, because he does feel it has worked for him, that he is going to be the white house communications director, he's going to be his own war room, and he's going to leave it all out on the field. i think at the end of the day, what we're all going to find out is that he's really great at selling books, but the politics surrounding the russia investigation and comey and trump are not going to be changed at all from what they're hearing from trump on the one hand and comey on the other. >> that's correct, we still don't have a communications director in this white house. with e we do have a press secretary sanders said we d

. >> neil: you're too young to remember this, but would you ascribe ken starr when his investigation>> of course, i don't remember that at all. but where there's a will there's a way. >> neil: what do you think? >> there's an effort to criminalize political differences. apparently there's an effort to criminalize the president making a joke. >> neil: it has come up and we know, the reports are that he considered it some months ago. maybe we're passed that stage here. but they want protection. >> it's not wise for congress to dictate who and when a president can fire and fire employees of the executive branch. it's a gross overstep of congress and would set -- >> neil: and backfire on the president. in this case it would. >> trump is not going to fire mueller. he is smart enough to realize the political consequences that would be severe. he would have republicans and democrats calling for impeachment. trump supporters would love to see him fire mueller or rosenstein. this investigation has nothing to do with trump-russian collusion. mueller is investigating strippers, this is a -- >>

president clinton did not like ken starr but he kept his towel dry and our question was how do we keep him in office, and we were successful. >> the whole idea that a president's lawyer could be raided and documents seized, i mean that's shocking. documents related to private communication with his client. talk to me about how precedented it is and what this means. >> well, in the case of precedential lawyers i believe it's unprecedented. and it is very, very unusual for the justice department or any u.s. attorney actually to conduct a search of an attorney's office. >> so is it odd then that the attorney would think it's a fishing expedition? >> it's not a fishing expedition. they have to go before a magistrate judge. they had to determine -- i'm sorry, they had to demonstrate they had probable cause not only that a crime was committed but the evidence of that crime would be found in the locations they specified. you can't just willy-nilly go in and say i'd like to fish around in attorney so-and-so's office. this was run up through the highest levels of the department of justice. >> l

we've seen one in the past that people didn't like, ken starr. this seems to be where they go.like gymnastics move like can i get my arm and feed to go to two different countries. it's a worse think discussion to have. just so happens that we're having it now as we're watching another one do all sorts of things outside of boundaries that politically some won't like, some might. >> i think the whole thing is a political situation on both sides of the aisle. democrats are not interested in preventing a constitutional crisis. they're interested in protecting their political talking point of russia base that's all they have. republicans don't want the political headache of president trump firing robert mueller if he were to do that. but then you have to walk the line of the people who support president trump at the base level, his ardent supporters want president trump to fire robert mueller. so there's political minefields here. i doubt that democrats are so interested in protecting a constitutional crisis. they're just interesting in keeping this talking point alive. >> i have a

>> i remember when ken starr issued his report that was in many boxes of supporting material that were dumped on the house side of the capital. robert mueller is going to make a decision similar to your decision about what to do. see going to do nothing? he has evidence right now that be highly relevant to voters in the midterm election. >> it requires a judgment call. norms are ambiguous, guided by that's make a judgment call as to what can i responsibly do and when, so hard for me to answer. in late october i couldn't find a way to avoid inaction. i don't know what his degrees of freedom would be. no one exit people in his team know whether a. >> say what a great audience this is these questions are very thoughtful questions. there's a 15-year-old from the lab school and says that 1.22 lose your respect and trust for trump? [applause] >> who had that kid in here? >> james: my concerns about the president's commitment to telling the truth was a process over time. i was concerned about it enough that it i documented my first meeting. but i wanted to make sure the intelligence chiefs ha

you were part of the president's team doing his ken starr. his willingness to focus on preparing an interview,. trump is very dirnt than bill clinton was. >> in many ways, erin, good to be with you. i'll believe it when i say public. bill clinton was a very disciplined president. he made no public statements about lying about his investigation. president trump you've seen step in it again and again as recently as yesterday with his stormy daniels comment, which was a disaster in terms of his legal standing. my guess is once he perceives the full extent of the jeopardy to which he might be suspected. . the reality of it is, this is a president that constantly says inaccurate things. mueller hasn't testified people, perjury charges be for the president? >> the president should be very concerned about being charged with a false statement. obviously, there is an. as we know, bill clinton was impeached for matters relating to obstruction of justice. i would tell you if. there's no up side for you, there's all down the road and he's inclined to exp

is robert mueller going to end up being the ken starr of 2018? question answers itself, but you can certainly understand why some people might be concerned about how collusion has morphed into bonfire the vanities. >> i think, joe, that there's a stark difference between what's going on under this special counsel and what went on when ken starr was the independent counsel, because you're absolutely accurate that during star's tenure, we morphed the from that original set of allegations and ended up somehow with a blue dress. what's going on here is very different. the entire stormy daniels drama is a separate lawsuit, raised by miss daniels and her lawyer. and it has nothing really to do with the mueller case. it's incidental. it could have occurred whether or not mueller was the counsel. the most interesting thing here is that the case that the southern district of new york is now pursuing against cohen. we know it arose somehow because of the mueller investigation, and mueller took very different tactic from the sort of approach that ken starr

ken starr. let's look at people who are running investigation.ll republicans. >> tucker: we weren't supposed be happy with that. these are not politicians. these are fbi agents -- comey has put them in an impossible position. they are now tied to comey. they are comey partisans. it's okay to think your bosses great, he was fired. now that he's made him soap into a political figure, it disparages their reputations and he puts into question the independence of the fbi. >> the president used him as a whipping boy. he wrote a book attacking him because the president spend the last six month attacking him. >> tucker: when i care about is protecting institutions whose employees carry guns and have the right to break my front door down. i'm very worried that this is politicizing and the eyes of the public discrediting our main law enforcement operation and jim comey didn't need to write this book. he did for the money. he should take a pass on the book and take a pass on the money because the effect is too damaging. >> we've talked here about 5 minutes,

russians interfere with her elections, and i think it is really important to point out that unlike ken starrwho made his whole investigation about sex, bob mueller has ended that off appointee. >> tucker: no. it's a distinction -- i just want to press you on whether you are specifically comfortable with the fbi going in with a warrant into the president's lawyer's office in search of materials related to his sex life. >> what i have said several times as i don't care about that. >> tucker: that's not an answer. are you comfortable with at the fbi did? >> i hope we both agree that in my course of the mueller investigation, he finds evidence of other crimes unrelated to his investigation, that it would be wrong to ignore them and so i think the proper thing to do was to handed off to someone else. inne this case, a trump appoint. it is not fair to say that is a distinction without a difference.ce that stance focused. >> tucker: right. i want to ask you the same question for the fifth time because you want to answerot it. this isth not what we were lookg for when we appointed a special counsel.

the democrats went after ken starr, everyone who worked for him it was a republican, you shouldn't believe a word he said. this is not unusual to make the special counsel a political punching bag. the only thing i can tell the president, mr. mueller has a good reputation. he's doing his job professionally as far as i can tell, and if you didn't coordinate, collude with the russians, you've got nothing to worry about. the only way you can get in trouble is to take the law into your own hands and richard nixon tried that, didn't work out well. >> shannon: i want to ask you about syria. in the wake of a chemical attack, the president has called a putin, russia, iran. tonight, your colleague had this to say. "if we put together a response is going to include military force, the president of the united states should come to congress and ask for authorization before military force is used." what is your take? >> i think he's been wrong about almost everything related to this more. i like them a lot. the congress declares war, the president can't do that. we've only had five declarations of war i

former independent counsel and former general ken starr weighing in on the significance of that. speak with the president has hired a brilliant lawyer. everybody knows that america's mayor is a lawyer, but i'll tell you this based on my personal experience with rudy giuliani. it is probably no better lawyer in the united states to handle this kind of very high profile situation. >> sandra: speaking of lawyers, more of them may be finding new work after the dnc just a short time ago filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit alleging a far-reaching conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign and help donald trump win. the defendants list is long and some might say includes everyone and everything but the kitchen sink. including the russian government and the trump campaign, wikileaks, paul manafort, jared kushner, george papadopoulos, and richard goetz among others. so now the same organization that helped fund the salacious unsubstantiated trump dossier has some new targets. i confused new work with new york because it's the new york city mayor. the first of all, the change to

and one of the differences between robert mueller who is a special counsel, and ken starr or lawrencependent counsels, is that a special counsel is an employee of the department of justice. and bound by justice department policy in a more direct way than independent counsels. it is justice department policy that the president cannot be indicted. so i think the only risk the president has is that mueller gives information to the house of representatives saying it might constitution evidence of impeachable offenses. the odds are the mueller team seeks or obtains an indictment of trump are overwhelming. it won't happen. >> think of how low the bar is for what would be good news for the president. remember last year he fired comey because comey couldn't guarantee that he wasn't under investigation. we now know that the president of the united states is under investigation. he is not the target. he is the subject. nonetheless. the reason, why he fired his fbi director, one of the reasons was because he couldn't tell him that he was not under investigation. now we know for sure that he is.

i don't know if you remember, but back in 1998, monica lewinsky was back before the ken starr grand jurynched some retaliatory bombing raids in afghanistan and sudan to retaliate against some attacks on embassies. and there was a lot of wag the dog talk back then and accusations. was he doing this just to distract attention from monica lewinsky's testimony? so this is what happens unfortunately when you have a situation where a president is both caught up in an investigation, a criminal investigation, and still must continue to be president of the united states. now, president trump did not help himself today when, at the start of a war cabinet meeting, he launches into this petulant and aggrieved denunciation of what seems to me to be a perfectly appropriate set of responses on the part of the prosecutors and talks about this as an attack on our country. so that doesn't give him a lot of credibility in his decision making here. >> rick stengel, i just want you to imagine being in meetings with the president considering a response to the situation in syria given some of this reporting we

special counsel is this out-of-control authority, somewhat similar to what clinton defenders did with ken starr, and to push this idea in friendly media that somehow mueller is out of control and to push the white house maybe to do something about him. so i think that's the political context that manafort is operating in with this case that legally is not very strong. >> there's also -- just from looking at this practically, susan, how much of this could be public pressure on paul manafort, to ryan's point, to remind him of everything that is happening? >> i think paul manafort must feel like -- keep in mind, he has one trial that's scheduled to begin in july and a second one in september. this is really coming to a boiling point for paul manafort. he's not been one of those who has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel. some people must be wondering if there comes a point where he might be willing to do that. there are not many figures who are more important than paul manafort would be. that would be a very big development indeed. >> and as all of this is developing we're hearing from t

he sat down with rod rosenstein, this is exactly what happened when ken starr sat down with janet reno and said there's new stuff about this monica lewinsky person. reno said you take it, starr, rod rosenstein said don't take it, i have now referred it to the southern district, that's now a separate file there. if trump should ever be fired, the southern district is in for the whole ride. they'll get resources from main justice, but it's not going back to mueller. >> guys thank you very much. >>> and turning now to our other massive story today, in just a few minutes, facebook ceo mark zuckerberg will face lawmakers' questions in a hearing here on capitol hill, he will give a status update on the senate judiciary committee and the commerce committee after it was revealed that 87 million users had their data improperly shared. zuckerberg posted this on face book, in about an hour i'm going to testify about how facebook will take broader responsibility to make sure that facebook stays a place where everyone can stay closer to the people they care about and to make sure that it's a positi

you know him because he worked for ken starr. in this case, he goes beyond the brooklyn judge or the ninth circuit ninth circuit district court judge by saying not only must you restore the current daca but you must start taking new applications. >> in actuality, it's a very narrow opinion. what judge bates did, and judge bates is not your normal district court judge. he was appointed to the fisa court by john roberts. he is respected throughout the judiciary. it doesn't mean his opinion is correct but is not one of these wacky california judges like allsup who clerked for willy mo douglas. what he actually said was this under the administrative procedures act, the government did not adequately explain why they think obama lacked that -- >> laura: here is the explanation. obama was acting as a legislator. that's basically what cession said in his letter. obama was acting as the super legislator because his democrats couldn't do amnesty. so obama, contrary to what his own justice department told him to do, he decided i'm going to

. >> harris: you're saying ken starr back in the day had to report back to the three judge panel in the clinton case and robert mueller doesn't have to report back to anybody. why? >> well, i think the difference between the two is there was a statute with the independent counsel that mandated different things which was allowed to expire. rosenstein does have there, are courts you can go to. manafort is raising that defense. that robert mueller has gone beyond his mandate. i think it's one they should be raising. if the president has any possibility of legal jeopardy here, which i still believe there is no evidence of collusion whatsoever that's been uncovered. this is the kind of argument they could raise. we're seeing a lot of this questioning about the scope of this investigation. just like we did in the 1990s with the clinton investigation. >> harris: some critics of the investigation, because it has not shown up evidence of collusion and we don't know all of what mueller has. we have not seen that. some critics are saying when you go this broad for this long, that there should be s

. >> well, look, i spent a year fighting ken starr and i think any reasonable person looking at what happened here says this investigation had no foundation and whatever foundation it had was not only wrong but corrupt. i think christopher steele was part of the fbi when he leaked, lied, and then was fired. page and strzok are clearly biased. the head of the fbi was clearly biased. the head of the cia appeared to be doing illegal leaks as well. this whole thing was corrupt. there is a doctrine called the fruits of the poisonous tree, that says when investigations get started like, this when searches and seizures are done on this basis, they should be thrown out. i think that's probably the best way to stop this thing because, otherwise, we are going all the way to the end and i don't think we should waste another year here. >> martha: so, one of the things that many points to when they look at the origins of this, if they don't see it in the carter page category. they see it in the discussion that papadopoulos had you feel like that's a tenuous limb to hang this fruit on, so to speak

i mean, if you look what the clinton white house did to ken starr, they came out every single day, youve republicans -- >> mike, don't you think you miss -- >> i think it's a completely different attitude. >> i think you completely mislead people yowhen you say t scope of the investigation was for conspiracy. it was for russian influence in the election, possible conspiracy and anything that arises from that. i think what's being investigated is all of that. i think mueller is well within the scope even though republicans, some republicans don't want to admit that. and the reason that he referred this other thing to the southern district of new york, because he thought it was not in his scope, and i think that you do a disservice to the viewer when you say those things and -- >> well, no -- >> -- it's absolutely not true. if you look at the scope of his investigation, you'll see he's well within it, it's not what you just said. >> i'm talking -- but you asked me about republicans on the hill and what -- >> that's how you replied and i say that you do -- you're doing a disservice becaus

i've said that on this network for over a year now, because they can be endless, as we saw with ken starr lot of others. >> but you got, what, 16 people charged? i mean, hard to say it wasn't worth doing. >> with all due respect, erin, none of them with respect to what the investigation was all about. collusion with the russians. >> issues with elections violations and money to -- >> i'm talking about collusion with the trump campaign. that's what this investigation was supposed to be about. and so far, we have no evidence of any collusion, and certainly no charges with respect to any collusion. and that's the frustration this president has. >> what about with bill clinton, started out with whitewater and then it went to monica lewinsky. so you cannot say one over the other. >> that's why i don't like special counsels. >> i think listening to the president say they've found nothing, trash people, say he did the right thing in firing jim comey, just brings home how serious this is, and how he's defending the indefensible at this point, and trashing law enforcement people who all, by the wa

. >> neil: i remember democrats being upset at ken starr from going far afield from white water transactionst is what it is. >> what particularly concerns me with this president is when he makes broad based ad hominem i believe attacks on basically the integrity of everybody at the fbi and everybody at the department of justice. his frustration with mueller is creeping in to attacks on our basic institution of justice. my concern is you then, in effect, give license to people who say well, maybe we shouldn't trust any of our law enforcement. maybe we shouldn't trust rule of law and there are some. >> neil: hearing what you are hearing out of james comey now. what you are hearing out of andy mccabe his former number two, you do get a feeling that sometimes, you know what do they say about the paranoid. sometimes it's a good thing for them to look over their shoulder because people are out to get them. >> i can tell you this much, neil, a year ago when i started the investigation and our bipartisan investigation, intelligence investigation is the last one standing. i said it was the most impor

hue hewitt basically said, well, if ken starr had raided the office of david kendall, president clinton'suring whitewater and monica loon i caewinsklewinsky, had a similar response. >> nonsense. commander in chief sitting with military leaders discussing a chemical weapons attack -- the russians attacked america, an act of war, when they hacked into our election. to advantage donald trump. donald trump never calls that an tack on america. it is really outrageous for him in the presence of military leaders to call his lawyer's legal problems an attack on america. it shows you, as my now late friend zell miller used to say, a hit dog hollers. mr. trump is hollering because he knows this hurts, it is hitting him. he's showing guilty knowledge. >> i think we have to keep the issues separate until we know that they are co-mingled, right? the raid on michael cohen's office is more than likely related to the stormy daniels payments, which is not related to the russia investigation. that said, the reason why trump is hollering, as paul says, michael cohen is his lawyer. that means he is the perfe

just as ken starr's were too broad. >> anything that comes up in the course of -- >> did i just hearefending bill clinton? did you say you were on the side of defending bill clinton? >> i was a kid. i was playing beer pong at that time. but if had i been in politics, i would say that was the wrong move for him to go that far afield of his mandate. >> the directive is anything that arose or may arise. he does have a broad privy. i'm sick of hearing the pig comments that the president made on the "access hollywood" bus. but it's not about that anymore. it's not about sex with a porn star and not about sex with a playboy playmate or his disgusting talk on a bus. this is about potential for paying money, hush money, covering up and intimidating people to kcover up this activity. and usually potential campaign funds, this is about campaign finance violations -- >> and also about potential money laundering. >> prosecutors always look to follow the money trail. >> right. >> the money trail here has led, strangely enough, toe a home equity account that michael cohen had, which was used to pa

now, michael, do i understand how these things work and you and i can remember the ken starr investigation that veered way out of control from real estate deals to an intern. if we tore take it face value that the president has been told not once but twice that he is not in these latest developments the focus or the targets of let's say just the mural probe if we are to take bloomberg to be consistent maybe the michael cohen probe widely to look at the other investigation going on involving the president's personal lawyer. your thoughts? >> my thoughts are that a lot of democrats, a lot of people in the press, a lot of critics of donald trump have been itching at the bait here waiting for donald trump to be thrown out of town by robert mueller. he is going to find that there was collusion with russia which is somehow a crime. he would be forced to resign. it's like richard nixon. i think it's become increasingly obvious that the chances of that happening are zooming down towards zero. and the reports that you had from bloomberg news about rod rosenstein goes in that direction. none of the

, sandra, when we look at this and look back at the day on the other side of the political aisle ken starrhis dangerous territory? wide ranging. >> sandra: i think that is the conversation. a lot of people are having a hard time wrapping their minds around how much time and the resources and the money and the people. looking right at you, maria, this is not a leading question, but i do wonder how we begin to finally to rationalize this ongoing. >> maria: well, we rationalize it because it's important for the american people to know what happened in the 2016 election. there have been serious allegations, if any of those are true. and looking to the question of obstruction of justice. this is why the special counsel was set up. none of us know what will come from this. not all of us can speculate. robert mueller is doing the job that he was given to do. and he will take his time and i think what we will sees a it gets towards the end is donald trump sitting down with him in some way. we have talked about whether that will be written. i think he won't legally be able to avoid doing it in pers

bill clinton was keel hauled by ken starr, told to appear before a grand jury and had to.s there negotiation here at all? why doesn't mueller tell him it, i want you in, you're under oath and better not lie. >> it's a legal dance at there point. this has been going on for weeks if not months. mueller has been talking to trump's legal team about how he needs to find out about the president's intent on key decisions. he's also told trump's legal team he is not a criminal target at this point. he's only a subject. and so he wants to have an interview, not have to subpoena him to come before the grand jury. of course, mueller still has that card in his back pocket if he wants to use it. at this point, they're having this legal dance trying to see if they can come to an agreement. >> why would mueller agree to shorten his investigation which giuliani is suggesting here because trump agrees to testify? >> it's not about the shortening the whole investigation. you have to think about the mueller probe as a two-track investigation. there's the russia collusion aspect of the invest

. >> let's go back to ken starr, he got a gratuitous bombshell in the form of the president and his lyings. >> neil: but that went far on appeal. >> it did, we could see the investigation go into a lot of different areas. the intriguing part of the investigation is the obvious catalyst is president trump. are they trying to put pressure, certainly they are. but how did they put pressure on witnesses to give them the catalyst? the search warrant is sealed, and they have profitable because, all of the attorneys will look at that and say that there is something there. something substantial to -- substantial to suggest to the two there is some kind of credence. -- >> neil: what has changed in the last week where the president might have been a subject in this investigation versus what could be something different now? people interpret it as read. >> there is nothing that has really changed, just the legs on the investigation, we can all surmise, but we do not know. >> neil: can you rule out the president cooperating with mueller now? >> they will certainly hold back, they do not know what is